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_________ If the human race is going to survive, this world needs a single superpower imposing peace…a hegemony...like the Pax Romana or the Pax Britannica. The superpower policing the planet will either be the United States or China. I'd prefer the United States. The Chinese would let us be entrepreneurs, but would silence our freedom of speech. They might also steal our technologies and cripple our industries in order to achieve economic dominance. I like being able to express my opinions. And I like being able to hear yours. I think our society is far more lithe and creative because we can wrangle out our thoughts-even if they do demonstrate a loathing of the current administration. None of this would be allowed in a world dominated by post-Dengism. Peace and order are based on a monopoly of force. A monopoly of cannons allowed the building of the nation-state. Now we're in a global age. It's time for a new form of monopoly. It is time, in fact, for what a mental midget in the White House is advocating-pre-emptive war. To achieve a monopoly of force, you have to demonstrate that you're willing to use it. We have two choices. We go to war now and kill, let's say 200,000 folks--a horrid and grisly notion. Killing a single human is an inexcusable crime. But we send out a loud and clear message that if you nuclearize, you are dead. We take care of Saddam and either scare the bejesus out of Kim Jung Il or whack him. Or we wait three to five years. By then every crack-assed, this-planet-is-a-cinder-in-the-eye-of-Allah-and-is-expendable, I-wanna-go-to-Paradise-and-collect-my-virgins dictator on the face of this earth will have his private stash of nuclear weapons. Then we'll watch anywhere from 200 million to 2 billion humans go up in glowing embers--assuming any humans survive at all. And assuming you and I are not among the victims. Remember the lessons of the 20th Century. We could have taken Kaiser Wilhelm down in roughly 1905. At that point he was too weak militarily to sustain a war of more than two to five months. Instead we had peace movements, hoped for the success of diplomacy, and gave the Kaiser time to build a nearly unbeatable military. The result: a seemingly endless war that started in 1913 and killed 20 million. In 1936, when Hitler broke the Treaty of Locarno and militarized the Rhineland, we could have easily wiped him out. He was bluffing. His military machine wasn't yet strong enough to defend itself against an attack by an alliance determined to stop his territorial hunger. Instead we had peace movements and hoped to address Germany's "legitimate grievances," resolving them via diplomacy. By 1939, Hitler's army was strong enough, his generals told him, to sustain a war of approximately six years. Again, tens of millions died because we wanted to settle things in a civilized manner. Do you want to be an accomplice in the death of between 200 million and 2 billion people? If so, please join your local peace march and chant until your uvula turns green. I want a world of
peace. So do you. But until our understanding of ourselves goes a good
deal farther, we have to face the fact that we live in a world of violence.
If we pledge to remain non-violent, those who've declared themselves
our enemies and who love "death more than you love life" will
chuckle at our weakness…and use it to cheer their comrades on to
new atrocities. They will fight the battle of the faithful and the good--the
fight for justice, manners, and purity-the battle for the truth of God's
messenger. They will assert the truth expressed by an al-Qaeda-allied
author, Seif Al-Din Al-Ansari, that we live on an expendable "speck
of dust called Planet Earth." They will use our reticence to make
the mother of all wars. And it will not be environmentally friendly.
hb: I believe that
these are the fantasies of people who need an easy scapegoat, a human
they can punish to relieve frustration and gain a sense of control over
complex and troubling world events. There are connections that span
continents--the economic oil wars between France's TotalFinaElf, Russia's
oil companies, and the American firms connected with the Bush family
are part of the mesh that's made America hawkish on Iraq and that has
put France and Russia (which has over 300 oil contracts with Iraq) on
the side of "peace." As real as these things are and as necessary
as it is to bring them to the light, oil is only one of the reasons
we are now at war in Iraq--and one of the smallest details of a war
that will play--for better or worse--a very important part in history.
The hunt for a small cabal secretly running the planet sooner or later
manages to discover that the Elders of Zion--the Jews--are behind every
evil and every event that perplexes or disturbs us. The implied solution
is the equivalent of a witchhunt in a primitive society. Stop the milk
from curdling and the cows from coming down with strange diseases by
eradicating the vermin--the Jews. ap: I have not paid much heed to conspiracy
theorists but several pieces of literature including "The Franklin
Cover-Up" by John W. DeCamp has heightened my curiosity (I'm sure
you've also visited info-wars.com, prisonplanet.com). Again, I just
wanted to know where you may stand on these aspects of the 'unknown'.
hb: in human affairs, Occam's razor doesnt work. The simplest explanation
is usually wrong. The number of elements that converge to create an
iraq war is huge. And it is not the causal elements that count the most.
It's the impact on the citizens of this world--on their ability to survive
as a species and on their ability to thrive creatively. Day after day, the
Pentagon trickles out news of additional forces being sent to the Gulf
region, everything from the hospital ship USNS Comfort to assault ships
based in San Diego and fighter wings from Virginia. About 60,000 soldiers
already are in the region, and the Pentagon has given the go-ahead for
up to 125,000 more, toward a force that eventually could reach 250,000.
Britain, the strongest U.S. ally against Iraq, is committing 26,000
soldiers - a quarter of its army - to the region. It already dispatched
the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal at the head of the country's biggest
naval deployment since the 1982 Falklands War against Argentina. To
complement the splashy military buildup, the United States is using
a variety of information warfare tactics, including propaganda broadcasts
to Iraqi soldiers and the first-ever use of e-mail to generals on the
opposing side, to nudge the Iraqi military toward betrayal and defection.
U.S. intelligence, for example, has been increasing ``info-ops,'' in
which leaflets dropped over Iraq urge people to listen to specific radio
frequencies that carry messages like this one addressed to ``soldiers
of Iraq:'' ``Saddam does not care for the military of Iraq. Saddam uses
his soldiers as puppets, not for the glory of Iraq, but for his own
personal glory. ... How much longer will this incompetent leader be
allowed to rule? How many more soldiers is he willing to sacrifice?
Will your unit be the next one to be sacrificed?'' U.S. officials have
served notice repeatedly that top lieutenants who remain loyal to Saddam
and those who unleash chemical or biological weapons could ultimately
face trial as war criminals. History offers many examples of soldiers
and their leaders making pragmatic decisions to switch sides when they
sensed the jig was up. In Afghanistan, most recently, less-committed
Taliban commanders defected and brought along the soldiers at their
command, which hastened defeat of the hard-line government. In the days
after World War II, the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek suffered
wholesale defections after Mao Zedong seized the countryside and began
driving the Nationalists into the cities. Andrew Krepinevich, executive
director of the nonprofit Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment,
said the key question now is when Saddam's underlings will ``begin to
fear the consequences of war and a coalition victory more than they
fear the tyrant for whom they work.'' The U.S. military buildup may
serve to hasten that ``crossover point,'' Krepinevich said, but he added:
``I think it will take more than a sense that war is inevitable. It
may occur perhaps following the initial attacks - if they are devastating.''
01/22/03 But he's a huge supporter of the Bloom-change-the-world project. He sees it as something that we need to insert so potently into the culture that it goes on after all of us have croaked. Have you seen Larry Gonick's books? A Cartoon History of the Universe Parts I, II, and III, a Cartoon Guide to Physics, A Cartoon Guide to Probability, etc. Larry is extremely smart (an MIT dropout), has an incredible grasp of almost any field you can imagine, is able to make the murkiest things clear, does it with humor, and draws delightful characters. It's a model for something, but for what? How about for something like one of the unfinished Bloom books: Life In the Fame Factory: Two Thousand Years of Media Madness or how Alexander got to be Great and other secrets from the history of spin-doctoring The Wobble Factor or The Case of the Curious Cosmos-photons, fads, stock markets, and the lust for novelty The Big Bang Tango: Quarking in the Social Cosmos-notes toward a post-Newtonian science The Motivated Universe or Hit In the Head by Heavy Metal (my allegedly humorous and serious memoirs from the music days) I'm being presumptuous. It's your own projects we have to nourish. But working on one of these things would be fun. There's tons of material in the computer for each of them. The spin-doctoring book would lend itself best to cartoon treatment. Anything we did in book form we'd try to translate into TV. When the reality show fad fades, viewers are going to be hungry for something new. The Discovery channels could really use a serious philosophical/science cartoon show. For the use of visuals in a Bloom book, see the proposal for The Hidden Hearbeat of the West: Reinventing Capitalism--Putting Soul In the Machine: http://howardbloom.net/reinventing_capitalism cm: nor the flesh eager to complete simple tasks. hb: I know the feeling. It takes a goal, preferably one that other people want and have committed to or at least have shown serious interest in. cm: And the limitations of my vocabulary, my sources of inspiration, my understanding of literature, art and the world around me have become more and more clear over the past few years as I've become more aware of the difference between good ideas and bad, good writing and bad, good art and bad...and my inability to concoct the former in each category. hb: Ummm, it sounds to me like you've become sharper, not duller. But right now the sharpness is turning on you in self-criticism. Which, in turn, comes from isolation and not having the next goal. The next goal ideally
would be a go-ahead from the cable folks to begin doing Venture Brothers
episodes. Then there's the current imperative--to reperceive the Venture
Brothers so that whatever the viewers find obnoxious about the boys
becomes an advantage. Ummm, maybe tell each tale from the point of view
of a mellow, elderly Brock with a glass of sherry in his hand sitting
in his posh mansion telling the tales of the distant past that mysteriously
made him rich. The setting would be a takeoff on masterpiece theater.
Brock could then narrate every act of violence with a total miscomprehension
of his nature. "I was annoyed by the yapping of a puppy, but handled
my irritation in a carefully controlled manner," says Brock as
we see him disemboweling the poor little dog and pinning its still-functioning
intestines up on the wall. So the running joke is that Brock thinks
of himself as a master of anger control--a paragon of sanity--who was
stuck with these looney kids and their loonier dad. He, of course, was
the only sane one in the bunch. But when we see the way he blows up
or butchers whatever comes across his path, we realize over and over
again that this guy just never got it. Yes, the Venture family was bananas,
but Brock was like King Kong on a mix of hallucinogens and speed. cm:
Perhaps it's the world's fault, and this is stuff I'd love more insight
from Howard on. There's serious, terrible stuff going on and I'm terrified
of it. hb: I've been working hard on getting it. Did I explain on the
phone why we NEED to go to war with Iraq? It's scary, but it's nothing
to the world we'll have in five years if we don't squash Iraq. I wrote
a mini-essay summing up the reasoning. I haven't fact-checked it, so
there may be some minor errors. But here it is: If the human race is
going to survive, this world needs a single superpower imposing peace…a
hegemony...like the Pax Romana or the Pax Britannica. The superpower
policing the planet will either be the United States or China. I'd prefer
the United States. The Chinese would let us be entrepreneurs, but would
silence our freedom of speech. They might also steal our technologies
and cripple our industries in order to achieve economic dominance. I
like being able to express my opinions. And I like being able to hear
yours. I think our society is far more lithe and creative because we
can wrangle out our thoughts-even if they do demonstrate a loathing
of the current administration. None of this would be allowed in a world
dominated by post-Dengism. Peace and order are based on a monopoly of
force. A monopoly of cannons allowed the building of the nation-state.
Now we're in a global age. It's time for a new form of monopoly. It
is time, in fact, for what a mental midget in the White House is advocating-pre-emptive
war. They will assert the truth expressed by an al-Qaeda-allied author, Seif Al-Din Al-Ansari, the fact that we live on an expendable "speck of dust called Planet Earth." They will use our reticence to make the mother of all wars. And it will not be environmentally friendly. cm: This world doesn't resemble the one I grew up in or hoped to live in as I aged. hb: it happened to my parents and probably to yours as well. It must have been scary as all hell to live through the First World War as a kid, then to have the Second World War break out when you were 33 years old. It's scarier now because we no longer live on a continent protected by the Atlantic and Pacific. Like the French in WWI and WWII, we're now in the middle of the action. One of my French friends was reduced to picking through the plants in the garden for snails during WWII, when she was just a little girl. It was the only thing she had to eat. But she lived through it and became an incredible person. cm: Not even this city is that anymore. There's an imbecilic child in the White House, which might have been excusable and bearable for a four year stretch in the past but now seems grotesque, deadly, world-destroying. Never before have I seen a leader so inclined toward the use of gross, inept catchphrases and soundbites--the likes of which would be corny in even the lamest action movie--to get his point across and dictate world policy. Never before have I seen someone with the gall to even bring up nuclear weapons (or "nucular", as he calls them) as a reasonable show of force in the course of diplomatic discussions. What once seemed like farce has now mutated into...what else can I call it when so many lives are at stake? Evil. hb: it's the hegelian thing of the greatest evil coming from a battle between two things that are inherently good. The Osamaites and Jihadists are idealists. They want to make a pure world, a world cleansed of evil and dedicated to good. But, as one of them explained in an article a year or so ago, the Koran says that the only way to achieve this is to torture and eradicate the bad guys. And the Koran, he says, is very specific about the fact that torture must be used. So must annihilation. In fact, the Koran says that anyone who sits at home and waits for the West to fall of its own weight or who waits for Allah to punish the west and bring it down, is a slacker whom god will never forgive. This guy is affiliated with groups that are a hair's breadth away from taking over Pakistan--complete with Pakistan's stockpile of nuclear weapons, medium range missiles, and three next-generation stealth submarines designed to get to North America, launch nuclear missiles capable of reaching inland as far as the Missippi River, whether launched from the Atlantic or Pacific, then go back home. If we wipe out Pakistan in retalation, no problem. The guys who want to take the country over are from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Islam, they say, can afford to lose 200 or 300 million members of the Ummah. See, they treat their women right. We don't. We turn them into prostitutes who parade around with their legs showing. But those who treat their women properly keep them at home covered in black robes and fuck them into having seven or more children apiece. Four wives having seven kids each--that gives Islam a lot of spare kids, kids overburdened mothers and fathers can happily send off to martyrdom...and paradise, where God pays for their food, their housing, and their virgins. cm: I was ashamed of this country when this clown got elected--even though he stole the election--because even if he lost the popular vote by a slim margin, it means that MILLIONS of people thought it was a good idea to vote for him. He, an unaccomplished, unspecial, mental midget of a rich boy, with no gift for giving speeches or forming sensible policies...how did so many people fall for it? hb: John McCain should have been the Republican candidate. He had the public following. But big tobacco and big oil wanted a puppet, not an independent human who might come down on them. And big oil and big tobacco controlled the Republican Party. That was the real story covered up by the diversion of the Monica Lewinsky affair. The public was cheated because the press was willing to go after Monica and ignore the purchase of the entire legislative system. And too many of us were ready to follow the red herring-or the stain of sin on Monica's blue dress. So if you want someone to blame, try the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the network news anchors. Or try us…the ones who gobbled up the Republican-sponsored Lewinsky soap opera. In all honesty, I must confess that the Washington Post did a superb job of investigating one rich bozo-Scaife--and his subsidization of a bring-down-Clinton-at-any-cost squad. The story just never made the headlines. I wish I had time for another life and another career--as a Washington pr man. It's the PR people who feed the press the stories. The reporters are too lazy to investigate anything on their own. And I like turning lunkheads with IQs of 135 around-smart people who've put their brains in storage-- making them see and write about what they're ignoring--the things that are REALLY important. Life in the Fame Factory gives the press the hell it deserves--it rips off the mask of integrity and shows the scum beneath the surface. It also shows how necessary pr games are to the shaping of a civilization. Nonetheless, on Iraq Bush is doing an absolutely necessary thing. cm: There wasn't even anything to fall for! He had no act, no schtick to dupe people with...he just showed up, performed badly, and people voted for him. We've had lousy presidents before and spent four years joking about them on Saturday Night Live and Letterman, but then we were suddenly dropped into the most serious of times in recent history, and things got extremely scary, extremely quickly. The more I think about it, the more ominous the feelings I can't put my finger on become, the more it seems obvious to me--through nothing but instinct and common sense--that a frightful shift has occurred in the halls of power. It's as bad as if someone actually decided to drive the country into the ground, and every day the moves this administration makes are more and more wrong, it seems. Hb: Bush's alleged tax plan-the make the super-rich richer, welfare for exclusive golf course members plan-may just soak the country dry. I don't really know what it will do to the economy, but it you gave those billions to poor people (who haven't done a damned thing to deserve them), the money would be spent immeidiately on booze, groceries, and $150 pairs of Timberlakes or whatever has replace Nike in street cool. Thus the money would circulate, making us all a bit wealthier. Call it the "trickle up" theory. Give money we don't have to the rich and they'll park it in a bank account or a safe investment. Investments are good when an economy is hopping. They give companies the money to expand production capacity. That, in turn, makes lots of jobs. Everybody gets a paycheck and goes home happy. But when the economy is sour, no company in its right mind is going to expand its plant and equipment. The plant and equipment it already has is going idle and losing money every minute it's out of operation. Who needs more machines to make things folks on unemployment can't afford? So aside from giving us a huge national debt, the pay-back-my-wealthy-donors tax plan is either criminal, bonkers, or both. But at least Bush won't do what a smart guy would do-piddle around and procrastinate on Iraq, worrying about the moral implications and out-appeasing Neville Chamberlain in the process. Making a Holocaust in the name of reason and peace. Cm: I don't know what to think any more...I don't know what's going to happen or where my world is going to be but it certainly feels like it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better--if it ever gets better in my lifetime--and that things will never be comfortable again. I have no power and no reliable information to work with. My dreams are dying on a daily basis and leaving only fear and anger, which in turn breed more fear and anger because I become afraid that these emotions are too easy for the wrong elements to harnass, and they're all too common in this country, among people who won't stop to think for a second. Hb: Yeeks. I'm hoping to address this problem through the Reinventing Capitalism thing. It should really be called something like Reinventing Western Civilization, but that title gives the feeling of a dry and disgustingly dull textbook. cm: Dark days, my friend, and dark thoughts going along with them. Hb: in a sense hopeful
days, Chris. It takes a crisis to make people welcome a new message.
But the race has been on ever since we met to get the positive message
out there before the negative can kidnap the culture. So far, I'm not
doing as well in getting positives across as is needed-not at all. Hopefully
with a manager, an LA attorney who believes me when I say I want to
do things whose meaning will still empower people 200 years from now,
and with the folks who seem committed to Reinventing Capitalism, I can
begin to make a difference. And can ally with others who are trying
to do the same thing. Just talked to someone tonight who's got an international
movement going. He and I seem to be on the same wavelength, delivering
very similar messages. It's time for us good guys to get together. The
problem is that each of us is driven by ego and a need for the spotlight.
That's our strength. Without that drive we wouldn't try to do outlandishly
idealistic things. But it's our disadvantage when we try to form an
alliance. Each of us wants to be the star. I sure as heck do. Horrible
confession, eh? Cm: Part of me wants to eliminate everyone from the
face of the earth who would wish ill on my country and my city--and
part of me is terrified at what would happen if any kind of real conflict
was ignited between "us" and "them", and wonders
what would be left of "us" in the end. Watching the press
go along with it all is perhaps the most disturbing part of it. I'm
usually the last one to cry "conspiracy" when the weird stuff
is going down, but it appears I've got an insane or imbecilic or puppet
president who is hell bent on going to war, hell bent on suppressing
any real reporting of anything that happens, but strangely wants to
throw out the constitution so he can read my email and knock my door
down, and strangely concerned with the flag and the pledge of allegiance--hastily
added 1954 references to God and all. So tell me, Howard, as the most
plugged in guy I know: what the hell is going on and how do we get through
this? hb: see above. Stay alert and active on civil liberties. But remember
this. I can get away with my techno lust because I know the environmentalists
are covering the negative side of things. That gives me the luxury to
technodream my ass off without thinking out what cadmium and nitrates
the gizmos I want would introduce into rivers, the ocean, and the atomsphere.
You've got powerful allies in saving civil liberties. Folks who are
normally the enemies of folks like you and me. Pat Robertson, my long-time
foe, has slammed down hard on Bush, saying that our civil liberties
must, must, must be saved. The radical right wing that normally wants
to not only whomp our freedom of speech but to cut out our secular humanist
tongues out is now gung ho into protecting the bill of rights. Don't
ask me why, I don't know. But these are people Bush has to pay attention
to. Our enemies may yet save us. Onward and hopefully upward--Howard
It would also allow
the Osamaites in New York, Detroit, Birmingham, London, Belgium, Holland,
France, Spain, and Germany to live up to another batch of Koranic commandments:
"Come fight in the way of Allah...kill them wherever you find them...then
slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers. You shall soon
be invited (to fight) against a people possessing mighty prowess; you
will fight against them until they submit... The punishment of those
who wage war against Allah and His Apostle and strive with might and
main for mischief through the land is: execution or crucifixion or the
cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides… Say to the unbelievers
if (now) they desist (from unbelief) their past would be forgiven them;
but if they persist …fight them on until there is no more tumult
or oppression and there prevail justice and faith in Allah altogether
and everywhere. … Then Praise be to Allah Lord of the heavens and
Lord of the earth Lord and Cherisher of all the worlds!" There's
a website that specializes in recruiting English-speaking young men--Arab
or Anglo Saxon--to join the jihad. It's www.jamatdawa.org/. The website
gives a pretty good idea of what militant Islam would do to a Europe
that's left unprotected by American might. Dr. Mohsin Farooqi gloats
over "the history of Muslim rule in Europe." Farooqui's goal?
"to remind the Muslim Ummah of its glorious past." Farooqi
crows with pride about the days when Islam's troops brought "terror
to the Inhabitants of Corsica, Sardinia, Pisa and Genoa," "massacred
the males" of Montferrat, and "devastated the cities and villages
[of England and Ireland] and carried away booty and captives."
Farooqi boasts about the fact that, "The terror of Muslim invaders
along the old Danube highway hung over Europe for centuries" and
that, "The yoke of Tatar Government remained on the necks of Russians
for two hundred and fifty years." Clearly Allah has given Islam
nukes for a reason. And Allah, with equal clarity, has said that all
the earth belongs to him and to his believers. The Jihad that's been
waged against the West for 1,350 years now suffered a temporary setback
in the 20th century. But men learn from their setbacks. The next century
is one in which men like Osama and Farooqi can foresee the ultimate
victory--a Germany, France, and England that will bow down to Islam
and, inshallah, shall even be ruled in a just and proper manner, ruled
by the laws Allah himself has given to man through his one true prophet
and that prophet's Koran. This isn't going to be an easy or cheap battle,
Frank. But we have to take the so-called "weapons of mass destruction"
out of the hands of the Libyans, the Pakistanis, the Iraqis, and the
Iranians before it's too late. Howard Pakistani Cleric Vows to Resist West By RIAZ KHAN .c The Associated Press NOWSHEHRA, Pakistan (AP) - The strong showing by religious parties in Pakistan's election heralds an Islamic revolution that will rid the nation of Western influence and lead to a state governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic law, a top Pakistani cleric said. The religious coalition, called the United Action Forum, swept to a surprising victory in the rugged North West Frontier Province along the border with Afghanistan, and stood poised to form the first Islamic provincial government in Pakistan's history. It also could become partners in the government in Baluchistan, another province bordering Afghanistan, electoral officials said. That would give Islamic parties a powerful voice in two of Pakistan's four provinces. Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province are the nation's least populous regions, but are of the greatest strategic value to the United States in its war on terrorism. ``We will bring an Islamic revolution to Pakistan,'' Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the vice president of the coalition, told about 3,000 male supporters at a sports stadium in Nowshehra, 28 miles east of the frontier city of Peshawar. ``Our target is to implement an Islamic system in the whole country, and the North West Frontier Province is the first step in this regard.'' Onlookers cheered and chanted ``God is Great!'' as Ahmed and other speakers railed against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for his support of the United States' war in neighboring Afghanistan. The elections were the first since Musharraf seized power in a 1999 bloodless coup. The two best-known Pakistani politicians, former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, both were blocked from contesting the race, leaving an opening for the religious parties to do well. Ahmed was one of about three dozen religious party candidates to win seats in the national parliament, by far their best performance to date. No other party seemed poised to win a clear majority in parliament, which is comprised of 272 general seats and 70 others allocated to women and minorities. In the National Assembly, with almost all of the 272 general seats counted, a pro-Musharraf coalition, the Qaid-e-Azam faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, had won the largest number. But their 77 seats are not enough to form a majority. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party was second with 63 seats, followed by the coalition of religious parties with 45. Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz group had 14 seats, with the remaining seats handed to independents or small party candidates. Another 70 seats reserved for women and minority candidates will be apportioned to each party depending on their showing, bringing the total size of Parliament to 342 seats. The religious parties normally register barely 5 percent of the vote in Pakistani elections, and their strong showing was seen as a repudiation of Musharraf's decision to support the United States in its war on terrorism. The head of Peshawar's main mosque used his Friday sermon to exhort the newly elected religious candidates to fight for Pakistanis imprisoned in that war. ``Their first task should be to seek the release of those Pakistanis who are held at Guantanamo Bay,'' said Maulana Mohammed Yousuf Qureshi, as supporters punched fists in the air to show their support. He was referring to the U.S. naval base in Cuba where suspected Taliban and al-Qaida are being detained. Ahmed, the head of Jamaat-e-Islami, the main force in the religious coalition, said his group planned a new reading of the constitution to bring the country in line with his brand of Islamic teachings. ``We will interpret the constitution of the country in its real Islamic spirit,'' he said. ``We will eliminate obscenity from the country, and particularly from radio and TV, and gradually, we will eliminate Western culture from our country.'' 10/12/02 _________ The lesson-never underestimate your enemy. Shoot for the best-peace. But prepare for the worst-attacks of a kind that defy imagination. Defying imagination wins wars for attackers. And war was declared against us by Osama bin Laden as early as 1992. Bin Laden is not just a shadowy exception to the rule-an outcast in Islamic society. He is a part of its large militant mainstream. Like another leader who declared war on the West--the Ayatolla Khomeini--bin Laden is what the Atlantic Monthly calls one of the most influential Moslems of modern times. We should never make the Cuban Missile Crisis mistake again. Especially when we are dealing with men who are willing to sacrifice the lives of huge numbers of their fellow Moslems in order to either Islamize us or eradicate us totally. Howard Reference: Reuel
Marc Gerecht. The Gospel According to Osama Bin Laden. The Atlantic
Monthly | January 2002. Retrieved From the Worldwide Web October 12,
2002 More Revealed on
Cuban Missile Crisis By ANITA SNOW .c The Associated Press HAVANA (AP)
- Key actors in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis meeting here Saturday
have learned that fast-moving events 40 years ago nearly spun out of
control and brought them closer to nuclear disaster than they ever imagined.
Studying newly declassified documents at a conference on the crisis,
Cuban, American and Russian protagonists were told the most dangerous
day of all was Oct. 27, 1962 - when a U.S. Navy destroyer dropping depth
charges off the Cuban coast almost accidentally hit the hull of a Soviet
submarine carrying a nuclear warhead. The U.S. military ``did not have
a clue that the submarine had a nuclear weapon on board,'' Thomas Blanton,
director of the National Security Archives, told reporters Friday night.
The nonprofit archive at George Washington University collected many
of the documents for study during the three-day conference on the crisis
that started Friday. The depth charges ``exploded right next to the
hull,'' Vadim Orlov, the submarine's signals intelligence officer, said
in a written account of the incident. ``It felt like you were sitting
in a metal barrel, which somebody is constantly blasting with a sledgehammer.''
At first, submarine crew members considered using the nuclear weapon,
thinking that war had erupted, Orlov wrote in his account. But they
ultimately surfaced, showing themselves to their American pursuers and
defusing the tension. Another document showed that U.S. intelligence
officials had photographed only 33 of the 42 medium-range missiles in
Cuba that the Americans later discovered were there at the time. Intelligence
officials also never found any nuclear warheads, which they later learned
had been kept on the island. The historic papers underscored the danger
of a nuclear attack - either accidental or deliberate - that existed
during those tense October days. ``A real war will begin, in which millions
of Americans and Russians will die,'' Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador
to the United States, quoted then-U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy
as telling him in a top secret memo, now declassified, on Oct. 27, 1962.
``The situation may get out of control, with irreversible consequences,''
Robert Kennedy warned after an American spy plane was shot down over
Cuba and President Kennedy was pressured to order pilots to return fire
if fired upon. Cuban President Fidel Castro participated in the conference's
closed door sessions Friday and Saturday, as did former Defense Secretary
Robert McNamara and other key advisers from the Kennedy administration.
As events began spinning out of control in late October 1962, Castro
began expecting a U.S. airstrike on Soviet facilities on the island
and was prepared to shoot down American combat aircraft if they invaded
Cuba, according to a top secret military directive to Gen. Issa A. Pliyev,
head of Soviet forces in Havana. The Soviets were prepared as well.
``In case of a strike on our facilities by American aircraft it has
been decided to use all available air defense forces,'' the directive
said. A portion of the documents, made available to The Associated Press
in Washington, demonstrate that the crisis did not end on Oct. 29, 1962,
with the Soviet Union's agreement to remove the offensive weapons, as
was widely believed. Weeks after the Soviet Union agreed to pull the
missiles from Cuba, Khrushchev worried that an ``irrational'' Castro
would renew tensions with the United States - and perhaps provoke war.
Cuba ``wants practically to drag us behind it with a leash, and wants
to pull us into a war with America by its actions,'' Khrushchev said
in a Nov. 16, 1962, letter to diplomatic aides in Cuba. During conference
sessions on Friday, participants also looked at American covert actions
following the disastrous CIA-backed invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs in
April 1961 and how they intensified Cuban fears of a U.S. military attack.
The missile crisis began in mid-October 1962 when President Kennedy
learned that Cuba had Soviet nuclear missiles capable of reaching the
United States. The crisis was defused two weeks later when the Soviet
Union agreed to remove the missiles. Former Kennedy aides Arthur Schlesinger
Jr., Richard Goodwin and Ted Sorensen are attending the conference,
as well as former CIA analyst Dino Brugioni, who interpreted American
spy photos of Soviet missiles in Cuba. On the Net: http://www.gwu.edu/(tilde)nsarchiv/nsa/cuba-mis-cri/
10/12/02 Is an urgent necessity doing double duty-fattening the bank accounts of Bush friends and family while it tries to nip in the bud an Islamic military buildup that could eradicate our population or, at the least, cause a societal meltdown in the US? Howard Oil steady after
Yemen ship attack By Sujata Rao LONDON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Oil prices
held steady Monday as dealers shrugged off a suspected attack on an
oil tanker off the coast of small Middle Eastern producer Yemen. Prices
had spiked in London morning trade as France opened a preliminary inquiry
into Sunday's explosion that gutted the French-flagged supertanker Limburg
as it prepared to dock at Mina al-Dabah near Mukalla in Yemen. Benchmark
Brent rose to a high of $28.60 a barrel, up 48 cents, but closed up
just eight cents at $28.20. U.S. benchmark light crude edged up three
cents to $29.65 a barrel, below recent $31 highs. A director of Euronav
SA, Limburg's owners, said he thought terrorists, using a small craft
his crew saw approaching the tanker, could have caused the blast. The
explosion raised speculation of an attack similar to one two years ago
when a boat laden with explosives crashed into the U.S. destroyer USS
Cole killing 17 U.S. sailors. "There is a feeling in the market
that this explosion highlights the danger to oil supplies from the region
in case of war," said GNI oil research analyst Lawrence Eagles.
Tensions already are high on world oil markets as dealers prepare for
the possibility of an assault within months by the United States on
Iraq. Oil traders already are pricing crude at a premium as U.S. President
George W. Bush steps up his campaign for the removal of Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein. The president is scheduled to outline his case against
Saddam in a televised address to the nation at 0001 GMT on Tuesday.
Bush said at the weekend that a war against Iraq may be unavoidable
and that a delay was not an option to keep Saddam from inflicting "massive
and sudden horror" with chemical and biological weapons. Oil traders
fear Middle East violence could spread and disrupt flows of crude from
a region which accounts for about a third of world exports. "There
is a certain nervousness ahead of the Bush speech which could potentially
move the United States closer to war," Eagles said. Washington
and Britain are pushing for the United Nations to adopt a tough new
resolution for the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq that would sanction
military action if Saddam does not comply. But the draft resolution
is opposed by France, China and Russia, the other three permanent members
of the U.N. security council with veto powers. Meanwhile the world's
largest oil consumer, the U.S., is facing what could be a serious shortfall
in crude and heating oil supplies in the approach to winter. Two consecutive
hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico in recent weeks that disrupted imports
and halted production facilities in the region, could bite further into
stocks which last week fell to 25-year lows. 10/07/02 14:43 ET Copyright
2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution
of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly
prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall
not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions
taken in reliance thereon. All active hyperlinks have been inserted
by AOL. _________ Howard In a message dated 9/29/2002 9:27:19 PM Eastern Daylight Time, alex writes: Retrieved From the Worldwide WebSeptember 29, 2002 http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/09/29/1033283386907.html A strategy for world chaos September 30 2002 Not so long ago, the US considered preventive war unthinkable, writes Robert Manne. On April 7, 1950, a plan for the conduct of the American Cold War, known as NSC-68, was handed to president Harry Truman. At this time the United States believed that, unless blocked by overwhelming military force, the Soviet Union was certain to try to expand its power and overrun the "free world". NSC-68 advocated a policy of global containment, deterrence and political exploitation of the internal weaknesses in the Soviet bloc. It provided the blueprint for US policy until the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. Ten days ago George Bush handed to Congress a document of similar ambition, "The National Security Strategy of the USA". If the Bush doctrine survives, it will play in the history of the war on terror the role NSC-68 played in the history of the Cold War. Given its extraordinary potential significance, I have been surprised by the lack of discussion in Australia so far. The Bush doctrine argues that in the 10 years following the Soviet collapse, the US failed to grasp the nature of the threats posed by the post-Cold War world. With the terrible events of September 11, the US awoke. At first the US characterised the new enemy it faced as "terrorism". Later it refined the idea of the new enemy to "terrorism with a global range", a euphemism for the kind of terrorism with the capacity to inflict harm on the civilian populations in the US, or elsewhere in the West. Since the shock of September 11, the new enemy has expanded to include "rogue states". In the Bush doctrine, a rogue state is a regime that brutalises its own people, seeks to acquire weapons of mass destruction and expresses hatred for the US. Although, according to the new doctrine, these rogue states are infinitely less militarily formidable than the old Cold War enemy, if anything they pose to the US an even greater strategic threat. Unlike the Soviet Union, the rogue states are not "risk-averse". For them, "weapons of mass destruction" are the "weapons of choice". Rogue states believe that by using such weapons they can overcome "the conventional superiority of the United States". Even more, such states are the major "sponsors" of world terrorism. Because of the "overlap" between rogue states and the global terrorist networks, the US now has no alternative but to act. Here we arrive at the heart of the new Bush military doctrine. The US, it is claimed, faces the prospect of attack either from one of the rogue states or from a terrorist group supplied by them with weapons of mass destruction. Before this kind of threat, Cold War ideas about deterrence and containment are obsolete. The only rational military strategy is the "pre-emptive strike". According to the Bush doctrine, the idea of the pre-emptive strike, as a legitimate form of self-defence, can be found in the mainstream traditions of international law. In this tradition, the use of a pre-emptive strike is justified at a time when enemy forces are massing, when a "visible" threat appears. After September 11, however, circumstances have changed. The new enemy is invisible. It may strike with lethal weapons without warning. To these new circumstances the concept of justified pre-emptive strike must adapt. "Even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack", under the new Bush doctrine the US claims the right to mount pre-emptive strikes. With the declaration of the Bush doctrine, a new chapter in the history of international relations may have opened. No task seems more vital than an evaluation of what is being proposed. One serious flaw in the Bush doctrine is what I would call its partial mischaracterisation of the likely behaviour of the enemy. Concerning the nature of this enemy, the doctrine is half right. It is almost self-evident that if anti-American Islamo-fascist terrorist networks, such as al Qaeda, were ever to become equipped with weapons of mass destruction they would do everything in their power to use these weapons against the civilian population of the US. Because the American struggle against al Qaeda and similar terrorist organisations is both necessary and just, it has received the support of virtually every government in the world. The post-September 11 extension of the struggle, to pre-emptive strikes against rogue states, seems to me, however, problematic in the extreme. The new Bush doctrine assumes there are states that are acquiring weapons of mass destruction for the purpose of launching attacks against the US, either directly or through proxy terrorist groups. For such an assumption, neither evidence nor logic exists. The Bush doctrine implies not merely that the leaders of the rogue states are extremely brutal (which is true) but also that they are, effectively, suicidal madmen who are willing to allow their regimes to be destroyed and their countries to be obliterated for the pleasure they derive from inflicting lethal damage on the object of their hatred, the US. There is nothing in the history of either Saddam Hussein's Iraq or Communist North Korea which indicates that insane behaviour of this kind is likely to occur. The new idea of
the pre-emptive strike is, moreover, far more revolutionary in its implications
than supporters of the Bush doctrine will admit. Because the doctrine
proposes military action against rogue states when no threat to the
US is imminent, what in reality is being proposed is a strategy not
of pre-emptive strike but of preventive war, a strategy that US military
planners in NSC-68, at the most hawkish moment of the Cold War, described
as "unthinkable" and as "repugnant" to civilised
opinion in the world. For a preventive war to be launched, according
to the logic of this new doctrine, a state need only imagine itself,
at some time in the future, to be under threat. With such an idea the
line between self-defence and aggression becomes hopelessly blurred.
The danger of this conflation of pre-emptive strike and preventive war
is aggravated precisely by the fact that the Bush doctrine makes it
clear that the US reserves for itself the right to strike unilaterally
without mandate from the established processes of the United Nations.
Under the new doctrine, then, the US may not only go to war on the basis
of an imagined threat. It also arrogates to itself the right to decide
alone when and where such a threat exists. At the centre of the doctrine
a huge conceptual hole appears. Does the US, as the world hegemon, alone
possess the sovereign right to act unilaterally against a supposed threat
to its security by prosecuting a preventive war, or does an identical
right exist for other states? If the right does not exist for others,
the Bush doctrine amounts to an almost formal claim to US world hegemony.
If, on the other hand, all states possess the same right, the Bush doctrine
opens the way to the return of the jungle, where the powerful have the
capacity to impose their will. ____________ |
